Mugabe conjures up thousands of 110-year-olds to vote

The president plans to steal a general election by rigging Zimbabwe’s electoral register by adding millions of non-existent voters to the list

Robert Mugabe has added nearly 3m voters to the list in a bid to rig the vote (Desmond Kwande)

President Robert Mugabe is planning to steal a general election, expected early next year, by blatantly rigging Zimbabwe’s electoral register.

Although the roll is a state secret, The Sunday Times has managed to view a copy. It shows that officials from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party have added nearly 3m non-existent “ghost” voters to the list.

Among the more obvious examples of vote-rigging is the Mount Darwin East constituency in Mashonaland, 100 miles north of Harare, where the last election was bitterly fought. According to the register, 118 voters are aged over 100, most of them born on the same day: January 1, 1901. This would make them 110 years old. Nine 106-year-olds were born on January 1, 1905 and 25 101-year-olds share a birthday on January 1, 1910.

In a country where the average life expectancy is down to 44.8 years, such examples of longevity would be remarkable.